Saw this today, and … well, I’m not going to be so forgiving to people suggesting to vote Third Party rather than vote for Biden. If Trump wants me to do something, and you want me to do that same something, that tells me you’re aligned with Trump.
This thread is a dumpster fire. If you would vote for Biden but won’t because of some Israel BS here then you are handing the vote for trump, who says:
Former President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that Israel must “finish the problem” in its war against Hamas, his most definitive position on the conflict since the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7. … "When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end.”
And we haven’t even discussed trump essentially saying he’d let Russia take Ukraine.
Voting tor trump? This is what you’ll get. So ***** you if you think not voting for Biden is some kind of solution, you’ll just get trump letting the Israelis hunt everyone down.
Oh an anonymous little bird told them that all the people disgusted with Biden are actual trump supporters in disguise! I’m sure that’s true and not complete fabrication like the average nyt anonymous source…
Biden doesn’t support genocide. He supports Israel’s right to exist, and thinks that they have a right to defend themselves. And even he is saying Israel must start respecting the laws of war or lose US support. You know what Trump said? “Finish the problem”. Even on this stupid level, you should be voting Biden because Trump is worse.
So, no, stupid person or Trump plant. That’s not how my logic works.
He is materially supporting the genocide. Even you bounce between describing this genocide as “Israel’s right to exist” and apologizing for Biden by citing his empty theatrical handwringing over Israel’s obvious crimes.
Edit: Honestly, which is it? Is Israel “fighting a just war”, or is it " going too far"? If it’s “going too far” as Biden is hinting, where and when specifically has it gone too far? More to the point, if Biden doesn’t take concrete steps to rein Israel in, what actual difference is there between Biden admin policy and Trump’s statement of “finish the job”?
sigh. Why do I even bother. Oh right, because if I don’t, other LIVs will listen to you and buy the bullshit you’re selling to weaken Biden and strengthen Trump. So here we go.
Biden is caught between the rock of supporting Israel despite their atrocious behaviours in Gaza and the hard place of either leaving Israel open to being destroyed by other Middle Eastern nations, or allowing Russia to bring Israel into BRICS as part of the anti-USA counter-movement in Russia’s and China’s desired ‘multi-polar’ world (and read that to mean the USA is ground under heal and now Russia and China are the new USA, because that’s exactly what it means).
Making the hard place even harder is the fact that if Biden were to cancel support for Israel tonight, I guaranfuckingtee you that by tomorrow, Russian-amplified Republican propaganda will be screaming to every person they can reach tomorrow the news that “Biden is an antisemitic puppet for Iran, Saudi Arabia, and every other Islamofascist nation in the Middle East and let innocent Jews die at the hands of the evil Hamas!!!” That could cost him more votes than not giving in to you lot of shitheads calling him a genocidal maniac and losing your votes.
It’s NEVER as simple as you lot make it out to be. International politics is nasty, and sometimes, you don’t get what you want. But Biden’s willing to entertain threatening Israel with a reduction of aid. Trump won’t be, and that’s on top of every other horrible thing he’s outright stated he’s going to do. Your blathering over how Biden is killing Muslims over there is going to get a metric fuckton of Muslims, Gays, Minorities, and even Liberals killed here in this fucking country.
So, stupid person or Trump plant, it’s STILL not clear why you should vote for anyone else than Biden unless you want Trump to win.
I don’t know why you bother either. Maybe you are trying to convince yourself. I can’t imagine the cognitive dissonance you are laboring under. You have to come up with wild theories that you pass off as some kind of sober ‘realpolitik’, which you paint as inevitable if Biden were to do literally anything to stop enabling Israel’s “atrocious behaviours”. The road to hell is littered with discarded principles. It blows my mind that you are angrier at people like me, than at the state of political leadership in the US. The fact that you can call me a “LIV”, “stupid person” or “trump plant” rather than understand that mine is a valid point of view, that I’ve come to based on my own experiences leaves me wondering how you come to such conclusions. You don’t know if or how I vote, and none of what I have said is even relevant to that. Anyway, I suspect your country isn’t really a democracy either, so I guess ultimately neither of our opinions much matter.
You morally should vote as effectively as you can EVERY TIME. EVERY vote on the left moves the conversation left.
What you’re advocating is a disastrous take, and you’re falling for classic voter suppression tactics. If you vote for Trump he backs Israel AND Russia. If you don’t vote at all, or throw away your vote, you’re helping politics move towards the right. It’s like a game of tug of war and you’re giving up before it starts.
Rush said it best “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”
This is what I can’t stand about these “I will not vote for Biden” Neanderthals. They’re not making a point by abstaining; they’re indirectly aiding Trump while pretending they have the moral high ground.
I used to be them in my youth. They think it’s like the free market: if I don’t buy any spaghetti sauce because I don’t like classic or meaty then eventually someone will fill the gap and get me the chunky sauce I’ve been wanting. Unfortunately that simply doesn’t work in politics.
Once you see it for what it is, a game of tug of war, you realise that you have to play everytime. Even if the current leader doesn’t want to go as far as you want every step in the right direction is a victory in itself. It also shifts the center for the next election. You get what you want through steadfast victories over time not through instant change towards an ideal world.
If only they understood the reality of having a FPTP electoral system with only two viable parties.
In a more sane system where every vote actually mattered, by all means, vote for someone else or abstain. But in this current system, 30% of the population could vote third party, and that third party might not even get a single seat. Each and every one of those hypothetical votes which ultimately didn’t matter could have went towards pushing away an insurrectionist lunatic.
One of two people will win the election in November. Biden or Trump. If you want Biden to lose, you want Trump to win. And if you want Trump to win, you want my wife to suffer (she’s a Black bisexual gamer nerd gal)… And we can’t be friends.
Fuck Trump but the Democrats did this to Republicans in the last two election cycles. They This isn’t some secret evil scheme that Republicans pulled out of their ass, it’s turnabout. As for boosting wedge issue both parties have literally been doing that for a hundred years!
But how else can someone feel morally superior while simultaneously assisting the candidate that will accelerate any genocides going on in other countries?
Oh no if only a single person on the internet hadn’t upset them, they could have voted for harm reduction. But now they have to vote contrary to what they want. So tragic.
It’s not so different from those saying that Hillary speaking plainly about awful people somehow did her election in…“zomg! If only Hillary had not said something something basket!1111”
Her mistake was not owning that. Had I been her, this is how I’d have approached that.
“I recently said at an LGBT fundraiser that roughly half of the people who support Trump are deplorable. I stand by that comment. Between the ones that hate Black and Hispanic people, the ones who think women belong in kitchens and not running the country, the ones who would rather a man who loves a man or a woman who loves a woman be erased from society, and the ones who think we should kill all Muslims and convert them to Christianity, there’s an awful lot of really awful people in the GOP. And I’m going to keep calling these people deplorable, because they are, and as for the question about if I’ve written off tens of millions of people, I ask Anderson Cooper how can you not write off these kinds of people. But what was not mentioned in this whole kerfuffle was that I also said there’s another huge group of people voting on Team Red’s side that just want the nation to recognise their pain and not write them off. We need to convince them that while he’ll make their lives different, it won’t be for the better. Maybe instead of trying to somehow reach out to racist xenophobic assholes, I can better spend my time reaching out to those who feel left behind.”
She tried to run away from that comment, and that just reinforced the fact that she’s unwilling to stand up for what she believes in. And the worst thing of all is that she was right. The GOP has an awful lot of really, really awful people in it…
Yes, exactly right. I’ve never been a big fan of how the Clintons try to run things by polls and/or the media jibberjabber of the day. Addressing it in the fashion you laid out would have been the right thing to do.
Repubs have zero principles nor integrity. The same assholes who were screeching about emails are saying it’s okay to sell classified documents out of a bathroom. They pick some rhetoric they like and latch on. I don’t know how many of them deliberately coordinate on that kind of lie or if most just see it and repeat it.
looking to try to find ways to divide voters they fear will back President Joe Biden, by boosting other candidates and wedge issues in the Democratic Party.
That’s been the Republican platform for several decades.
Its basic strategy in any campaign. Also, I’m not super convinced that RFK jr is really taking any votes from the left. The campaign seems to think they are, but isn’t releasing any data on this.
The polls I’ve seen with/without RFK seem to be pretty back and forth. I wouldn’t be surprised for them to be aware of how he impacts votes in very specific counties they feel they need to win.
I don’t know if I believe this consultant. Its also not super clear to me that RFK is pulling any voters from Biden as the consultant claims. You would have to be an extraordinarily low information Democrat to believe that RFK is where you are going with your vote, and if you are that frustrated with democrats, Its not clear to me you are a low information voter.
doesn’t help that polls have been basically broken since 2019. that happens when a million people die with a bias for older people and they were the last to have landlines and answer unknown numbers.
It’s a source talking to the NYT. If these were journalists with a long track record of deception, then I would raise questions, but the NYT is generally decent.
Anon sources are totally cool, but only if they’re being cited by someone that is trustworthy.
If these were journalists with a long track record of deception
Yes.
the NYT is generally decent.
I had a good laugh, thanks!
Anonymous sources aren’t totally cool, they are the absolute bottom of the barrel of journalism.
They should absolutely not be used for opinion, and normally need to be backed up by third party evidence.
The AP routinely seeks and requires more than one source when sourcing is anonymous. Stories should be held while attempts are made to reach additional sources for confirmation or elaboration. […] We must explain in the story why the source requested anonymity. And, when it’s relevant, we must describe the source’s motive for disclosing the information.
The New York Times and Frontline report that an Iraqi general witnessed the Iraqi military training Arab fighters to hijack airplanes. Mother Jones later reports general to be bogus Chalabi plant
The reporter is the third party who confirms the evidence, either by finding corroboration with another source or who knows enough about the source to know if they could have that knowledge.
This does require reporter to be trustworthy, but that is true about anyone who provides evidence.
That is not true of anyone who provides evidence in the sense that non anonymous sources can be verified by third parties. That’s precisely why anonymous sources are considered the bottom of the barrel of journalism.
I don’t trust WikiLeaks, I trust the cryptography behind DKIM. I did in fact verify some of those cryptographic signatures myself. And you can too if you’d like, because the source material was published in full.
You are either with us, or you’re with the terrorists - gmtom - George W. Bush
Are the MAGA under your bed too? Liberals are the worst, you people are so brainwashed that you can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t think like you isn’t to the right of you.
The alternative to you being to the right of us is that you’re to the left of us, but are too stupid to see that you’re being played by the Republicans. Their plan for the next 4 years is an utter dismantling of the government and rebuilding it in the Conservative image. So, which are you. Invested in the Right, or too stupid to see you’re playing right into the Right’s hands?
Clue bus for everyone who thinks this idiot is correct.
Anonymous sources are definitely the least reliable source, and if you can get someone to stake their name and reputation on a claim, you much rather do that than use an anonymous source. However, anonymous sources do have their place in journalism!
Had Edward Snowden kept his name secret, he might well have escaped his fate of being forced to live in Russia. Had Julian Assange not revealed his name, he might be back in Australia or somewhere else besides a British jail. Anonymous sources exist to allow information to be passed to reporters when that information is either confidential or sensitive, or could put the source at risk. Generally, if you want to use an anonymous source, you need to meet the following requirements:
The source must have first-hand knowledge and evidence of what’s being revealed.
The information is high-value and cannot be obtained in any other manner.
The source has legitimate and compelling reasons why they will remain anonymous.
Anonymous sources are clearly identified as such without revealing their identity.
Other safetyguards may be used.
Rather than the reputation of the source, you use the reputation of the reporting media. Granted, there’s been a lot of BS peddled by the Media of late, and so it’s hard, and sometimes you have to be a bit more discerning that you might have back in the day. Do you trust NYT? That’s up to you. I do. Ghostalmedia does. But the useful idiot/trumper wildbus doesn’t. You’ll have to make up your own mind.
I’ll point this out. There’s no way Biden can be knocked out of the running now. In January, one of two things will happen. Either Biden will take the oath of office, or Trump will. No amount of third parties or other nonsense will change that (because we don’t have RCV, 51 Lefties can lose to 49 Righties if 3 Lefties vote for Jill Stein and 48 vote Joe Biden, and that’ll remain the same if 48 vote Jill Stein and 3 vote Joe Biden). Read Project 2025 and know this is the framework for Trump’s first day in office if he wins, and decide: Is your single issue important enough to let Trump into office? If so, go ahead and vote for the distraction object. Just know you’re doing the DUMB thing and will suffer for that choice. We warned you in 2016 and you didn’t listen. It’s up to you if you will listen to us in 2020.
Not really on basic principles. Just on methods and approaches. There’s general agreement that the civilian casualties in Gaza are too high, for instance. The debate is do we try to maintain some influence over Netanyahu to try to sway him, or do we just cut them off and then whatever happens over there is whatever happens, we’d wash our hands of it.
Then the people that go after him more hardcore aren’t exactly the strongest “supporters”.
Stupid hot-take. Israel has been an ally of the United States for decades. Biden is trying to walk a fine line between maintaining relations with them (despite their current despicable right-wing government, which might not last long, given the huge calls for a new election in Israel) and pressuring them to stop. Trump would gladly suggest paving Gaza over and turning it into a parking lot, and voting for any third-party candidate is identical in result to voting for Trump.
I just want to make you aware that your argument is that Biden is basically not responsible for his position on Israel. Like I really want you to actually notice what that does rhetorically, because you are effectively ceding the position that Biden is bad, but Trump would be worse (maybe).
So is Biden the President or is he not? Like, the fucking point is that Biden can do better right now and is choosing not to. Is he the President and capable of such a thing or is he not? With whom does the buck stop?
You need to start understanding that the consequence of the “Any blue will do argument” is the recognition that Biden is a weak, unfit leader that doesn’t have accountability, and that this rhetorical structure is what is losing Biden this election. Making excuses for Biden on this policy position weakens him as a candidate, and further ensures a Trump victory.
That’s a blatant misreading. He is fully responsible for his position, but due to the circumstances of this situation, his position is necessarily nuanced. It has to be, to avoid destabilizing the entire Middle East.
Imagine he just declares Israel no longer an ally, and tells them they’re on their own. How long before Iran attacks? How long before other Muslim-majority countries are dragged into it? How long before it becomes a broader conflict, with Israel fighting basically everyone?
How long before we end up dragged into it anyway?
Biden is trying to pressure Netanyahu with what leverage he has, and he is trying to prevent it from become a large regional conflict. I’m sure he wishes BiBi wasn’t the one in charge there - most Israeli citizens certainly seem to want him gone, too - but wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.
With Biden, we have someone in the White House who actually gives a shit whether Palestinians get to live. That’s a hell of a lot better than anything Trump has to offer.
Biden is, and always has been, a full throat-ed Zionist. He’s maybe the furthest right Democrat on this issue from his cohort/ demographic of senators. He’s hard right in this way. Further right than Trump. You are projecting nuance and your own desire to belief that Biden is good on Israel onto Biden beliefs. But by Biden’s own words and his stated beliefs, he is doing pretty much exactly what we would expect him to do in support of Zionism. If you map current actions onto his previously stated beliefs, nothing is out of order. The only change has bee some lip-service sound byte level saber rattling. There is no need to project deep nuance onto the situation if you just look at Biden’s words and policy positions and map them to what he does. He lines up as a squarely Neo-conservative Zionist in rhetoric (preter Israels advancement of the genocide of the Palestinian people post October) and has lined up squarely as a Neo-conservative Zionist in action. He makes decisions and acts like the person he said he is.
The people abstaining from voting or voting third party need to get their heads out of their asses and understand they’re not doing anything but helping that insurrectionist turnip by doing so. If they aren’t willing to consider that their actions can have that consequence, they weren’t going to use their vote in any meaningful way to begin with.
The people abstaining from voting or voting third party need to get their heads out of their asses and understand they’re not doing anything but helping that insurrectionist turnip by doing so. If they aren’t willing to consider that their actions can have that consequence, they weren’t going to use their vote in any meaningful way to begin with.
You don’t seem to understand that you are the one with their heads up there ass and have been this whole time, to the point where its not even clear that this election is salvageable. How you are arguing that people should vote doesn’t work and isn’t convincing people to support Biden. Its having the opposite effect. If you keep relying on this approach to rhetoric, you are guaranteeing we’ll get Trump as president. The only thing that is working is upping the pressure on Biden to do better, and apologizing for his shittiness to date by arguing that “We’ll Trump is probably worse” is basically an argument to not support Biden, so just stop apologizing for him. Start calling on him and his apologists to demand better; its the only thing that stands an icecubes chance in hell of saving this election for him/ us. He needs to feel so isolated and see the writing on the wall so plainly that he see’s himself as having no other option.
Saying you’ll be supporting him in-spite of his shitty policy positions means he doesn’t have to move to your policy position. And there are enough people out there that aren’t going to vote for this guy based on his policy positions that he wont win without them. Brow beating and wagging your finger at them isn’t going to change them. You have to change Biden. Continuing an approach that is driver voters away from Biden is stupid. Change your approach. Make your arguments to Biden. Call into radio shows. Share you’re new opinion online and don’t let up. We lose if Biden doesn’t change his policy position and months of apologetic (both online and in media) may have cost us the ability to win this election.
I understand where you’re coming from, but respectfully, I disagree with how effective it would be. If telling somebody that their actions will lead to a Trump victory and explaining how much worse that will be not only for Palestinians but for Americans doesn’t convince them to choose the lesser of two evils, nothing short of replacing Biden in the next election will work.
Skepticism runs really deep in the current political climate, and even if Biden changed his mind tomorrow and withdrew support, those voters are still going to distrust the motives behind it. For all they believe, it’s an election year, and Biden is just making an empty promise to stay in power. He could easily turn around and resume support once he regains his position, and they’re not going to trust that he won’t when they “know” he was more than happy to support their genocide before he got in trouble for it.
That’s not to say I am supporting Biden or apologizing for his actions. I’m right there with you when it comes to trying to demonstrate my dislike for his handling of the conflict, but I’m also voicing my concerns that whatever election cycle Trump is participating in isn’t the time to practice a hard line stance on voting third party to express your dislike of both the Republican and Democratic candidates.
Skepticism runs really deep in the current political climate, and even if Biden changed his mind tomorrow and withdrew support, those voters are still going to distrust the motives behind it.
I agree. If not for the apologists making excuses for Biden’s shitty policy positions (Any blue will do/ Trump is worse), we maybe could have gotten to him early enough to salvage this mess. But continuing to apologize for Biden’s shitty policies is continuing to damage his electoral chances. Its the only option we have at this point, barring a complete rebellion at the convention.
Even in a scenario where nobody took the “he’s better than Trump approach,” I think it would have still been too late.
Any hesitation in taking a stance against genocide is going to look like a begrudging concession. I agree that the optics are even worse now that it has gone on for half a year without any significant change, but he cemented the public perception of himself by the end of the first week of continued support after we were all made aware of Israel’s actions. Changing his mind at any point after that looks like a politician doing what a slimy politician does: chasing public opinion to stay in power.
Granted, it might have worked to convince some people. But, I believe there’s enough of an overlap between that demographic and the “any blue will do” voters that the only ones left would have permanently rejected the idea of voting for him the moment they felt he supported genocide. That is to say, I think the only people left not choosing him over Trump are either disenfranchised voters or hardline moralists who don’t realize what’s at stake by letting Trump win.
His point is that Trump’s position is to absolutely flatten Palestine, and that would be far worse than Biden continuing his half-assed pussyfooting.
When the only viable options for president are Trump or Biden, why would anybody who actually cares about Palestinian lives not do what they could to prevent Trump from turning them into glass and ash?
His point is that Trump’s position is to absolutely flatten Palestine, and that would be far worse than Biden continuing his half-assed pussyfooting.
No fucking shit. Every idiot talking head is parroting the identical argument. And its not working, which is my point.
Trump isn’t president, Biden is. So Trump being better or worse is irrelevant and the argument is worthless. And that’s what they and (perhaps?) you don’t seem to get. The rhetorical approach of blaming Trump/ claiming Trump is worse, is having the opposite effect that I assume you think it should have. The argument they and you are making isn’t gaining Biden support, it is weakening support for Biden, and the insistence on this failed rhetorical approach is currently costing us the general.
Fucking stop. Stop apologizing for Biden. Stop defending it. Stop excusing it. Start demanding Biden do better or we’re fucked and you’ve guaranteed us Trump.
You can both demand Biden do better and still meaningfully vote against Trump. These are not mutually exclusive actions.
By all means, threaten to not vote for him. Write him a letter saying why you refuse to donate to his campaign. Hold him accountable for his part in not condemning Israel and withdrawing support for them. But when the time comes in this election year, if you don’t actually vote for the Democrat candidate, you are undeniably tipping the scale in favor of the more genocidal candidate.
It’s not that anybody arguing to vote for Biden wants him to win. It’s just that nobody here wants Trump to win instead.
If you can’t understand the cost of Trump winning, good luck to you, and thanks for ruining it for the rest of the country.
Man, there’s a bajillion angles to this. We’re talking global politics here.
Israel under Netanyahu has said that it will extinguish Hamas even if the entire world turns against them. And you can go down many paths looking at what happens if the US abandons Israel.
First, some facts.
Israel has not imposed sanctions on Russia.
Israel maintains diplomatic relations with Russia.
Israel has not backed Ukraine in the war.
Russian is the third most-widely spoken language in Israel
Israel has the third largest Russian-Speaking population outside of Russia and other post-Soviet states.
Israel took a neutral stance on the Crimea invasion.
Netanyahu and Putin have a particularly close relationship.
Now, just think for a moment what Russia might do if the US were to end its special relationship with Israel? I’m sure that’s weighing on Biden’s mind as he navigates the waters of reining in Israel’s attack on Palestinians. Putin is looking for ways to erode American influence world-wide, and this might well be an own goal if we just blindly drop Israel like so many of these…ahem, ‘dissenters’ seem to want us to do.
Besides. Trump says Israel should ‘finish the job’ in regards to the Palestinians so I’m not sure how the … person below you thinks Biden is to the right of Trump on this matter. Unless ‘the right’ means letting SOME Palestinians live, and ‘the left’ means ‘invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.’ I mean, it’s not like some rightwing shithead ever said anything like that, amirite? Lol.
Will you address the fact that Trump is much, much worse for Palestinians? You and the rest of your ilk have been dodging that. Address it directly, or GTFO.
I didn’t like Biden in the 80s when he voted on a constitutional amendment for states to over turn Roe v Wade. I didn’t like Biden in the 90s when he reinforced the war on drugs and drastically increased the prison population. I didn’t like Biden in the 2000s when he supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and removed the ability to default on student loans. And I still don’t like him today when he claims he’ll undo some of the awful shit he did if we vote for him just one more time, all while supporting a genocide and inching us closer and closer to an all out war in the middle east.
So no, I won’t be bullied. If your candidate sucks, and you parties policies suck, that’s on you.
By all means, abstain. Just don’t expect to have earned the right to complain when one of those two candidates still wins and does something you don’t like.
Nothing short of a revolution would change the rigged system. At the very least, voting gives me a small chance to push the results towards the least-crappy direction.
I’m actually going to disagree that Biden sucks. Biden did the best he could with what he was given. Let’s remember:
Biden was handed an epic shitshow of a situation when he took office.
He was given ZERO help by the previous administration. They did everything in their power to gimp Biden out the gate. That he managed to handle COVID so well is a testament to his skills and determination.
Inflation was beginning before COVID, and thus before Biden. It started with electronics, where combinations of chip shortages and tariffs on Chinese imports saw prices of GPUs and game machines and so on skyrocket. I remember the ridiculous costs of the 30x0 GPUs thanks to bitcoin mining and then Trump went Tariff Happy. ** No plans at all on how we were supposed to buy stuff that didn’t have the Chinese Import Tariff on it. No plans, at least, until Biden took office and passed the Chips Act.
Biden actually DID implement Student Loan forgiveness. Between my wife and I, we’d have saved 40k USD on our loans, but the Trump Supreme Court, brought on by people voting Stein in 2016 (and Nader in 2000) ensured we got zip. Biden’s trying to work around the Supreme Court, even now, but of course, Republicans know the court is their friend. They knew that the Court was NOT their friend in 2000 and 2016, but we forgot that the court was our friend during those elections and now the Court is most definitely NOT our friend, but Biden is doing the best he can with what we gave him.
The Chips and Infrastructure Acts, and the various COVID era funding helped pull a LOT of people out of the fire.
I see jerks who come in and complain they didn’t get what they want to be akin to staying home on the election because they didn’t get the shiny rainbow unicorn they SWORE they were promised. Like a petulant child stomping his feet because he didn’t get the Christmas gift he begged Santa for, just before he threw a screaming temper tantrum in the Mall when his parents were warning him that Santa knows when he’s been naughty. An immature git that deserves to be taken over a knee and swatted, or just outright ignored, rather than indulged.
Inflation sucks. These last 4 years have been difficult, and not everybody has gotten out in one piece. But it was worse for a whole hell of a lot of people when Trump was in office, and he promises to make it hard for those people again if he gets in office. We can’t reach out to the Trumpers, but let’s NOT do their dirty work for them!
Wow. You did a good job illustrating exactly why I’m not going to play nice with you people anymore. You’re lying and distorting the truth in order to make it more likely that people like my wife are ground under the bootheel of Team Pepe authoritarianism this time next year. Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?
Your claim that Biden voted for a constitutional amendment for States to overturn Roe v Wade omits the fact that he voted against it the next time Shithead Hatch presented it. Why don’t you explain to the class why you felt it necessary to distort Biden’s record, holding him accountable for a vote he has already acknowledged he got wrong by voting against it the second time it was presented, eh?
And the Iraq War? Yes, Biden got that vote wrong. He bought Bush’s lies that this was about bringing Hussein to the negotiation table, like a lot of us did in that time. The guy even admitted he got it wrong as early as 2005. What more can you ask? The guy can’t go back in time and fix his mistake. He can just own up to it. And let me tell you, I was on the same page as Biden back in 2003, when it seemed that Hussein was holding onto weapons and helping the people that attacked us on 9/11. I hoped we would use the same things that Biden hoped we would use – diplomacy and the threat of the big stick to convince Hussein to let the weapons inspectors back in and comply with the mandates the UN put on him.
The Patriot Act was indeed one of the darkest moments of American history, a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 that we should have gotten rid of far sooner than we did. Biden was instrumental in getting it passed, for sure. But it expired in 2020…and despite Biden being in office for 4 years, it has not been reauthorised. Again, are we not to give him credit for what he’s done since these horrible things he did? Is he to be held accountable for everything he’s ever done, with no chance of redemption? I think that’s really damn stupid, or a plot by a really evil person to try to eat away at Biden’s voter base in order to get somebody far worse elected.
Let me remind you who is on the other side of the equation – a man who bragged he could grab any woman he wanted by the privates, who ran the country headfirst off the cliff of Covid because he thought it was some Democratic Party plot, who pulled us out of Kyoto AND scrubbed any mention of climate change from the website, who got into a trade war with China without any plans for how to deal with our reliance on cheap Chinese manufacturing (causing the inflation we are dealing with, in part), and who referred to the shitheads that killed minorities, gays, and liberals as ‘good people’. I also remind you that he plans on being “Dictator for a Day” should he win in 2024, and will implement Project 2025, a nightmarish scenario for gays, minorities, transgender folk, environmentalists, scientific thinkers, and liberals of all stripes. And need I remind you that Roe v. Wade went down thanks to Trump.
One of two people will win the election in 2024. You can’t change this. Either the guy who may not be liberal enough for you wins, and we make slow and halting progress on all Left-Wing priorities, or the guy who is an utter shithead gets into office and everything we’ve worked for in the past 100 years gets torn down. Gay marriage? Gone. Minority rights? Gone. Freedom to worship or not worship according to one’s desires? Gone. Freedom to protest our government? Remember the white vans that disappeared people during the George Floyd protests? Yeah, gone too. Oh, yeah, and IVF and contraception is gone, and women’s rights are gone. It’s very likely that your 2028 election will look like the one Putin just ‘won’, corrupted and replaced with ‘vote for Master Trump or suffer’. We aren’t kidding when we say that this is the most important election ever. It’s a rehash of 2020, which was the most important election ever (prompting me to donate money to a politician for the first time in my goddamn life…) at that time.
So. There’s one of two things you could be. Either you are…
Somebody so stupidly obstinate that you’d vote against your best interests because you’re blinded for your hatred of Biden and can’t see the fucking blindingly obvious truth that Trump is 100 times fucking worse than even your stupid caricature of Biden…
Somebody who is an evil sack of shit that would rather see Trump win so he’s here trying to convince us we should not vote for Biden, despite the blindingly fucking obvious truth that Trump is 1000 times fucking worse than Biden.
So, which is it? Are you a moron, or are you an asshole? Either way…this article wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for the people you and your fellow sockpuppets full of excrement are trying to convince to let Trump win the fucking election.
Per Rule 6, I am not allowed to call you what I really want to call you, nor use the strength of language I feel you and your fellow … ahem, ‘dissidents’ deserve. Therefore, I’ll just say it this way. You can buzz off, pal. You aren’t convincing me of your nonsense, and the only reason I’m here is to tell people who might fall for your … BS…yeah, I’ll call it that…is that this person trying to convince you to vote third party or stay home is full of nonsense and will lead this country into ruin. So, do us all a favour and piss off, would ya?
So, if Biden doesn’t win, Trump WILL.
What’s Trump’s plan?
Arm Israel and expand the genocide.
How can you possibly think you have any kind of moral high ground when you’re willing to let someone win that will make the problem worse?
This is a literal example of the trolley problem.
If you do nothing and don’t vote, millions of children die.
If you vote, thousands of children will die.
But you know who’s killing those children?
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yet you fuckers act like Biden is over there doing it with his bare hands.
Get your morals straightened out, because if Trump wins, that blood is on your hands as well as his, and I’d rather only have a little blood of my hands than a lot.
Yet you fuckers act like Biden is over there doing it with his bare hands.
I’d be far more interested in discourse if they sad what’s actually going on. Biden’s turning a blind eye towards the misbehaviour of Netanyahu because he’s afraid of what happens if he actually takes a stand. He’s not actually doing the Genocide. He’s picking sides.
It’s like threatening your best friend with a knuckle sandwich if he doesn’t stop creeping on a woman you barely know and don’t really like. Do you throw away decades worth of friendship by setting your best friend straight, or do you tolerate the boorish behaviour from your male friend? Bonus points: if you choose your friend over this woman, you get called a rapist, despite the fact that you told this gal to get lost and leave you alone. That’s the choice Biden has right now. Israel is America’s friend. Hamas is not and while we are empathic about innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire, we know that Russia is waiting in the wings to reduce our influence world-wide…so on TOP of having to choose between your best friend and some annoying woman you barely know, you ALSO have your worst enemy at the club waiting to swoop in and tell your now-ex-best-friend how awful and cruel you are and bend said ex-best-friend into another enemy. Yay!
that go after him more hardcore aren’t exactly the strongest “supporters”.
Yeah that’s just patently untrue. The people going hard in the paint on Biden from the left are your hardcore progressive and leftist base. People that actually volunteer on campaigns, donate, go door to door, sign people up to vote and otherwise do work to get people elected. Think our revolution, justice democrats, extinction rebellion etc… Its not people passively engaged in politics that are activated and engaged in these organizations which are fundamental to getting any Democrats elected. Its activated, deeply engaged, strongly opinionated people who do the work of getting Democrats elected.
And this highlights the divide in Biden’s support. You have armchair centrists who basically do almost nothing and are only minimally engaged in the political process wagging their fingers saying “Any Blue Will Do” at the cohort of individuals who are being critical of Biden, but whom are also operate the cranks of the actual machines that gets Democrats elected. Any leftist worth their salt understands strategic voting, but that’s not the point. The point has been that this neo-liberal, technocratic approach to voting that Democratic centrists are insisting on, is losing and will continue to lose this election. The only thing that has kept Biden in this game was an activist rebellion within the Democratic primary system that forced his response, and he’s only really offered a papier-mâché stiffening of his rhetoric on Israel, but has done basically nothing to fix the underlying issue. IF Biden doesn’t fundamentally shift his position on Gaza and Israel now, this is over. He’s lost this election.
In this vein, the only thing that can actually save Biden from him self is a complete and total rebellion within the DNC voter base, and to basically drag Biden to a better policy position. Otherwise he will lose this election. The lame ass excuse of “Well Trump would be worse” is actually working against Biden right now, because Biden is actually the president, not Trump. The phrase “The buck stops here” is so apropos in this situation, that its almost comical.
The people going hard in the paint on Biden from the left are your hardcore progressive and leftist base.
That seems to be the central point of your argument, and then you claim all the centrists are not really helping in the trenches. It seems to me this has no basis in fact, and there are plenty of more moderate dems that volunteer, donate, are politically active, etc.
I imagine the confusion stems from moderates not protesting at as high a percentage, since protests draw a lot of attention, where a lot of the other work is less dramatic. The core of the democratic party isn’t just excited young progressives though, it’s also educated soccer moms with time on their hands.
edit: Consider it this way: When Hilary ran against Bernie, did she just have no volunteers on her side, because they were all with Bernie?
You obviously have no clue who is involved or works on political campaigns.
Both left and right, its people who care deeply about something. You don’t do that kind of work if you are on the fence on issues. You do that kind of work when you have a strong belief about something.
You’re just assuming that there aren’t people that care about having moderate policy positions.
edit: Here’s another question to get at the heart of that. Are all moderates just “on the fence” between two extremes that draw the only people that feel strongly? Or is centrism its own philosophy, that someone can believe deeply in, even if you personally may not see the appeal?
I don’t know, I think you’re just spinning together a bunch of bullshit to hide the fact that there kinda is a large, more moderate faction in the country, that doesn’t like any extremist politics. They’re not all disengaged or apathetic, they’re the Bill Clinton supporters, and now Joe Biden supporters.
This group is far larger than either the far left or right, often middle aged, employed, often with kids. They’re not disaffected, and actually pay quite a bit of attention.
Of course, the existence of this group completely destroys the entire DNC conspiracy theory bullshit people like to lean on to attack democrats, just like it destroys MAGA people’s happy illusions that they’re the ones that are actually the “average American”, so I understand why it’s so distasteful to some.
But yeah, they’re out there. So go ahead I suppose, what do you got?
I don’t know, I think you’re just spinning together a bunch of bullshit to hide the fact that there kinda is a large, more moderate faction in the country, that doesn’t like any extremist politics. They’re not all disengaged or apathetic, they’re the Bill Clinton supporters, and now Joe Biden supporters.
I keep half-agreeing with your comments: you’re right about the faction you’re talking about existing, but I think it’s a very them-centric point of view to call them “moderates” and not “neoliberal extremists.”
If they were all neo-liberals then there wouldn’t be support for broad business regulation and higher taxes, which there is. There is a neo-liberal faction of it, though, certainly.
The problem I have with your argument is the implication that people who care deeply about helping the Democratic party are extreme leftists/progressives and not extreme neoliberals.
When you volunteer for a campaign, you aren’t volunteering for the “Democratic Party”, you are volunteering for a candidate, whom you may agree with somethings on but not others. However, people who want to make a difference are strategic about how they use their time. You pick whoever you are ideologically aligned with that you can stomach and you think has a chance of winning and you sign up and start dialing/ knocking on doors/ etc.
I keep hearing words like “fight” and “drag” and “push” as to what we do to stop this, but they don’t mean actually fighting or dragging or pushing, just being annoying in ways that are easily dismissed.
I’ve gotten enough “fuck you I do what I want” letters from my reps and senators about things that I’ve given up “pushing” them in that way.
I think you make a good point on this. Its also not clear to me that any amount of cajoling is going to move Biden. However, I can’t think of anything else that can be ‘done’. If demanding he step further to us on a policy to get our votes when he’s losing an election doesn’t move him, it might be that he cares more about the policy position than he does winning the election.
And it kind of seems like that’s the case. He’s losing the election and he’s not moving on the policy position except in ‘leaked calls’ and sternly worded letters. If he doesn’t move left, he loses the election, but staying where he is at policy wise might be more important to him than preventing Trump from taking office. We shouldn’t assume he has the same priorities we do around government. Everything I’ve seen from his generation of geriatric politicians is an unfounded faith in the systems ability to self correct and resist things like the coup attempt in 2021. He’s from a generation that believes “the system works”, because its worked well for him/ them. I wouldn’t put it past him to leave us completely exposed to a fetishist take over because of this unfounded belief. In failing to support Ukraine when its core to the principals of a liberal democracy, and in supporting Israel while the actions they take are antithetical to a liberal democracy, he’s left us glaringly exposed to a fascist take over this election cycle.
The other part is that online lefties like us are a minority. If Biden does move left he risks losing the election to the majority of Americans who support Israel unconditionally. So nobody’s going to end up happy and he loses the election anyway.
He’s from a generation that believes “the system works”, because its worked well for him/ them.
This is a great insight that people who keep saying “we just need to push him after the election” don’t seem to get. Yes, I’m sure that in the past writing letters to Congress might have done something more than waste paper. But the system is so broken now that people don’t believe them and see the only way to get a message across that this is unacceptable is to not vote.
[Edit: I did not mean to write an essay but then here we are…]
If Biden does move left he risks losing the election to the majority of Americans
I agree completly overall, but I want to dig into this particular statement. My view on elections and electoralism has evolved, and at this point, I consider the ‘center’ of Americans to be a fiction. The basic paradigms driving votership in the US has shift to be basically cohorts of distinct voting blocs that have to be corralled into moving together. I think the right have used this understanding to great effect, and because of this they’ve been punching well above their weight class in terms of electoral impact relative to the actual number of people who vote. The right started this strategy in the 1960s with the southern strategy splitting off white evangelicals from Christians more broadly, and building them into a coherent voting bloc. Its more than I want to put the effort into writing down here, but my basic argument is that you don’t win modern elections through broad appeal. You win modern elections by appealing strongly to specific voting blocs and driving those cohorts of individuals to the polls. Bernie used this to almost snatch the primary from Hillary, before the DNC pumped the brakes and put the fix in. He wrangled voting blocs that were otherwise non-voters or more limited in their engagement with the party (leftists, progressives, black, lgbtqia, etc…) to engage a diverse coalition into voting for him, even if they were not individually united in their interests. Trump is doing a similar thing with libertarians, MAGA, qanon, anti-women voters, fascists, christian fascists, neo-liberals, and neo-conservatives. Internally they don’t really have a coherent issue set, but he basically goes to them one at a time, develops an understanding for their priorities, then speaks to those priorities directly. Trump isn’t making a broad appeal to the American center, he’s making a narrow appeal to hyper engaged individual blocs of voters, and its working extremely well. Biden comes from a different generation of neoliberalism (1984-2000) when there basically was 0 diversity in American politics and both parties effectively had the exact same set of policies. It was a unimodal distribution of issues, and so appealing to the center made sense. We no longer have a unimodal issue set or a unimodal distribution of voters. We have something, not even bi-modal, but more like two inverse paretos or poissons. There is almost no overlap in votership or policy priorities for the two parties or for the sets of demographic blocs that are going to show up to get some one elected.
So my overall argument is that an appeal to the center or to moderates is basically worthless because they don’t actually exist any more in the American electorate. There isn’t a silent majority. The unimodal distribution of votership died during/ after Clintons second term. Since then we’ve become increasing polarised as a country and as a votership because we no longer overlap whatsoever in terms of legislative priorities. As such, there is little value in appeals to moderation or centrism, because there are no voter blocs in those locations you can drive out to the polls. And recursive or negative attacks are also of little value because blocs aren’t formed ‘against’ things, they are formed ‘for things’ so you have to be ‘pro-something’ to drive a bloc. I think Trump gets this very much and is using it effectively, whereas Biden and basically all Democrats apart from Bernie simply do not understand how the electorate is formed and what it takes to win a national election at this point. 2020 was exceptional in that Bernie had fully activated a massive bloc of progressive and leftist voters on issues that were priorities for them. Young people and progressives won 2020 for the Democrats, and have been basically rewarded with a punch to the teeth in terms of Bidens policies.
In summary, modern voters don’t like Democrats or Republicans, but are voting based on their particular issue sets or identities and who is speaking to them or prioritizing those issues. Trump figured this out in 2016 and has been using it to great effect. Biden still thinks voters are “Democrats” first, and that their policy positions come second. This view is a holdover from a political paradigm that is no longer present.
Thanks for the essay! I liked it a lot. (Though the first paragraph could be broken up for readability.)
The tl;dr I’m getting is this: Both parties are “big tent” parties now, and Democrats seem to have forgotten this and are operating on 90s political theory. Sound about right? If so, I agree wholeheartedly.
My problem with the idiots screaming “Genocide!!!” is that they are overly simplistic in their understanding of the problem. First, if we cut Israel off, lots of very pro-Israeli donors carry out their threats to cut donations to the Left and give more to the Right. That’s more ads, more canvassers, more campaign staff, and more polling moving from Team Blue to Team Red. As much as I hate the fact that $$$ rules everything in the fucking USA, it’s still a fact, and the LAST thing Team Blue wants to have voters hearing is “America sold out Israel to Hamas after Hamas started the war.” Think about how low-information so many voters are in the USA, and think about how EASY it would be for Russian-Amplified Republican Propaganda to convince low-information, and frankly low-IQ voters that Democrats are the antisemites in the discussion.
Speaking of Russian-Amplified propaganda, let me remind everyone of these fact:
Russia and Israel have historically had a friendly relationship with each other.
Israel has a strong Russian contingent. The language is the third most spoken language, and Israel is ranked third in the list of non-Soviet nations that speak Russian.
Netanyahu and Putin have particularly close ties, both being right-wing Authoritarian Jerks.
What is Russia trying to do? Reduce America’s influence in the world so it can step in and take over (it will fail, and learn QUICKLY that it is China’s bitch, but it doesn’t know this yet…). What’s the easiest way to do that? Have America cut off aid to Israel, then step in. Alternatively, if America STAYS supporting Israel, amplify the lie that Biden supports Genocide since he won’t cut off aid to Israel, allowing Russia to step in.
We need to call this bullshit out here and now, and point out the fact that either people pushing this nonsense are useful idiots, pushing Putin and Trump’s propaganda like the morons they are, or that they’re actually in cahoots with Putin and Trump, and need to be called out as the shitheads they are.
I’m done playing nice. It’s time to call a spade a spade.
Anybody who thinks the US will abandon Israel is ignorant of history, too. As is anybody who thinks they can vote for a president and not get blood on their hands.
I think this is a bad way to say ‘you have to vote for the least bad option out there’, because it implies you are responsible for what your President does. The logical next step, argued by shitheads a plenty here, is that if you don’t vote for a president, you don’t have blood on your hands. My argument is that’s not true.
Vote for Biden, you have voted for the least bad option out there. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is.
Vote for Trump, you have voted for the worst option out there. You are directly responsible for what comes next.
Vote for Third Party or staying home as a Lefty, you have reduced Biden’s vote share for no chance at winning. In my 51/49 Left/Right split, you and two of your buddies have picked Left2, ensuring Right wins 49R/48L/3L’. You too are directly responsible for what comes next.
Vote for Third Party or stay home as a Rightie, while you won’t offset the Lefties voting Left2, you’ll at least reduce Trump’s share and maybe we can get 48L/47R/3L’/2R’. Can you convince a buddy to join you?
Because Israel sucks and so does Hamas, Palestine is going to get Genocided either way. The difference is that with Biden in office, Muslims, Gays, Minorities, and Transgendered folks aren’t going to get genocided here, and MAYBE Netanyahu reads the room and backs off, grudgingly, because he knows Dem voters are good with hanging him out to dry if he keeps this shit up. Elect Trump like the assholes we keep encountering screaming Biden Genocide want us to do, and not only do Palestinians get gleefully genocided by Netanyahu (who is the actual genocidal maniac), then so do all the other people I listed above.
I don’t think the Gaza issue will end up being a big issue for Biden. Those wanting more action on Gaza are generally to the left of Biden. It’s not likely that they will stay home on election day or vote 3rd party and help Trump that way. They’d much rather have Biden after all.
I think that few people are Biden supporters and more are “We have to get Biden in so that Trump doesn’t get in and hopefully someone younger will come by for the next round but he’s still better than the alternative by a mile”.
We could have elected a shoe into office in 2020 the anti-Trump sentiment was so strong. Its not as strong now, and Biden is a worse candidate than he’s ever been.
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